Is Guava A Donut?

I've had this since I was a kid, got it on vinyl when I was 15 or so. I doubt that I've listened to it all the way through more than 3 or 4 times. But I'm really glad it exists, because this is hands-down the weirdest music I've ever heard.

Every now & again the songs slip momentarily into a recognizable form-- perhaps in a 'quirky geeks trying to out-clever the Residents' sort of mode. But then the insane gibbering insects start their choral music again and the wolf spiders crawl all over your face and the moon starts beating its big plastic drum overhead and everything goes fractal grid, and it goes back to bearing no relation whatsoever to any known variety of human music.

Interestingly, this is completely non-electronic, instruments are all tweaked objects and modified sound sources. You can't get this particular kind of bizarreness from oscillators.

Enjoy, Meltmaster!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ovzbmmijytm/Renaldo and the Loaf- Songs for Swinging Larvae.zip

It's Cold In Outer-Space: Stereolab

For a long time I was stuck.

I didn't shop at record stores, department stores or mega-stores. The internet wasn't the shopping/swapping/discovery paradise that we now know it to be.

I pretty much bought everything, including music, at thrift stores. I have to say it was really great, and I stumbled my way into a good musical education. But my ears were as dusty as Farberware and rusty as a dinette chair (to paraphrase Jonathan Richman).

Then, back in 1996, on the way out to San Diego, I stopped off in Chicago to see my little brother. He was finishing up his BS at the University of Chicago, and was living in a big old house with several roommates. They held a party the night I was there, and someone popped in a CD towards the end of the evening.

Emperor Tomato Ketchup, by Stereolab.

It blew my mind, like the first time you see HDTV. Or taste a really good Cabernet. Or go from dial-up to cable.

Cold and warm; distant and intimate; borrowing from the past but creating the future.

Velvets. Astrud. Nico. Kraftwerk. I could hear it, but it was all in crazy technicolor. (OK, I know you can't actually hear colors.)

Anyway, I copied that thing onto a C-90 the next morning and listened to it over and over, driving through the desert on the way to the coast.

"The Noise of Carpet":



And from Mars Audiac Quintet (1994), "Wow and Flutter":